The war was a great disaster for Athenian naval power. Now the period of greatest eclipse for Athens from this point of view was the seventh century. Throughout it there is no indication whatever of naval activity at Athens, except a possible war against Mitylene. Even that must be put at the earliest close on the year 600 B.C., and is to be regarded as announcing the beginning of the new epoch of activity in the sixth century[861]; and against it must be set the failure in the struggle with Megara for Salamis[862]. This had not been the naval position of Athens earlier. During the dark ages she appears to have been a considerable naval power. A tradition preserved by Plutarch makes Athens succeed Crete in the command of the sea[863]: naval power is implied in Theseus’ expedition to Crete; a poem of Bacchylides[864], which is illustrated by a vase painting of Euphronios[865], tells how Theseus went to the depths of the sea to fetch up the ring of Minos, and the story has been brought by S. Reinach into connexion with rings such as those of Polycrates and the doges of Venice, and explained as symbolizing the winning by Theseus of the sea which had been previously the bride of Minos[866]. The date of these events must not be pressed. The period of this sea-power is plainly the dark age that followed the breaking up of the Cretan and Mycenaean civilization. It is the period of the pottery known as Geometric, and the Athenian Geometric, the Dipylon ware, again and again shows pictures of ships. Thirty-nine examples are quoted by Torr[867], enough, as pointed out by Helbig[868], to prove the important rôle played by the Athenian navy in the life of Athens of that age. The Dipylon ships, as remarked twenty years ago by Helbig[869], show that already in the eighth century Athens was preparing to found her power on her navy. It requires some such catastrophic explanation as has just been offered to account for her complete set back in the seventh. [Sidenote: (iii) dress.] One result in Athens of the reverse in Aegina, so Herodotus declares, was a revolution in the dress of the Athenian women, who gave up the Doric costume, which was made of wool and fastened with pins, and adopted in its place the Ionic, which consisted of sewn garments made of linen. The passage is a _locus classicus_ among writers on Greek dress, and it must be at once admitted that nearly all of them accept a date late in the first half of the sixth century[870]. So late a date seems to me to be untenable. It can be reconciled neither with the statements of Thucydides on the subject of Athenian dress[871], nor with the evidence of extant monuments[872]. The sumptuary laws on women’s dress passed by Solon in 594 B.C.[873] were plainly directed against the Ionian costume. They show that it must have reached Athens by about 600 B.C. and offer no evidence that it had not done so considerably earlier. Bury dates the introduction of Ionian dress into Athens “c. 650 (?)[874].”